


My Target is a Professional Killer

by j_obsessed



Category: Cricket RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Developing Relationship, M/M, Mild Blood, Running Away, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:55:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29038209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_obsessed/pseuds/j_obsessed
Summary: What it says on the lid tbh <3
Relationships: Jos Buttler/Joe Root
Comments: 13
Kudos: 16





	My Target is a Professional Killer

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy! Hope this is nicer than the last two things I put out... 🥴 (apologies for that)  
> If you're concerned about the blood tag, see the endnotes <3  
> Love you all <3

He's hunched over the floor, breath coming in gasps. Joe’s eyes widen. _Fuck, he’s been made._ Hurriedly he looks around the bedroom for anything that will a) keep him alive and b) let him finish his job. He quickly stands up, almost disorienting himself even further, and turns to make his way to the window, before there's a firm hand sitting snug against his jugular. 

“Take one more step, and I’ll make sure my hand around your throat is that last thing you'll ever feel."

His chest is heaving, and he can feel the bruises on his cheekbone surfacing. There’s a dull ache in the left of his abdomen, and his vision is still slightly blurred from the impact of a fist to his jaw.

He tries to dislodge the hand resting over his neck, but it’s to no avail. He’s taken by surprise with how the fingers seize around his neck, writhing under the grip, albeit… not entirely _uncomfortably_.

“Twitchy, aren’t we? Why don’t you tell me what an angel like you is doing here, with a gun in your hand?” the man asks, fingers trailing over the weapon in Joe's left hand. 

“Don’t paint me like I'm a helpless victim.”

“No, you’re right, I’d paint you like one of my French girls,” comes the retort.

“I could kill you in my sleep.”

“I _was_ asleep, and you couldn’t even kill me while you were _awake.”_

Joe rolls his eyes.

“Now,” the man whispers, awfully close to the cut of his jaw, “I’m going to take the gun from your hand, and let you go. Have you got anything else on you that I need to strip?”

“Uh-” Joe swallows harshly, and _nearly_ shivers, eyes _almost_ slipping shut at the chuckle he receives in return. “Are you asking if I have weapons on me?”

"I'm asking if there's anything on you, that I need to take _off_ you."

"Y-yes."

“Hm. _Prepared._ How wonderful.”

If he weren’t acutely aware that he was talking to a target, Joe would’ve choked on his breath. He practically does anyway. The man removes the gun from Joe’s hand, discarding the ammunition, and dropping it onto the floor, kicking it below the bed. _Damn. He's good._

“Keep your hands up, where I can see them,” his mark says, as he slowly starts removing the multitude of weapons from his body with one hand. There’s a switchblade in the sleeve over his bicep. And another pistol on his hip. A small swiss knife strapped to his lower hamstring, and two electroshock discs on either side of his calves.

For good measure, he runs his hands over Joe's back, and then across his sides, trailing over the ribcage and up between his pectoral muscles, where he finds a tiny, very well-concealed listening device. _Fuck. How did he even-_

The man drops all of it onto the floor and then finally dislodges his digits from around the assassin’s throat. Joe turns to face him but refuses to look at his face.

“Well done, gorgeous. You follow instructions so well. It’s really a shame you were sent to kill me. You’re awfully pretty, could’ve had a lot of fun.”

“You know who I am,” the realisation dawns on Joe a little later than it should.

The target rolls his eyes. “I’m a target, and you’re a high-profile, goody-two-shoes assassin who works for ‘ _the greater good’._ Believe me, I know who you are.” Joe gets a better look at his objective. “But the real question darling, is do _you_ know who I am?”

“They don’t tell me that. They give me a mission, and I do it,” Joe swallows. His interest is piqued, but he’s not about to fraternize with an enemy. Even if the enemy is fucking _gorgeous._

The general information he was given was all very straightforward and _very_ vague. _Blonde, built, lives on the seventh floor, slip in through the window, kill._ It’s too dark for Joe to get a proper look, but he doesn’t need much. He can clearly see the way the man’s shoulders fill out his shirt, and the way his thighs flex under his shorts. He’s got to be fit, especially if he can take Joe in a fight like that.

His thoughts are broken by an exasperated sigh. “What am I going to do with you, love? You’re too beautiful to kill… Really, it’d be such a shame to waste such… potential.”

“Oh _please,_ spare me your bullshit. I know where you live now, I’ll come back for you.” Joe grits, eyes sharp, willing to give absolutely nothing away as he slips from his mark’s grip and toward the open window. He almost misses the weight around his carotid artery.

“I expect you to,” is all he gets in return.

“Just because you caught me once, doesn’t mean you’ll do it again,” he points out in annoyance.

“Hmm, of course. But it’d be a shame not to see your face again, beautiful.”

“There’ll be a bullet through your temple before you even realise I’m here,” Joe hisses, as the target hands him one of his knives back.

“I’ll be waiting. Maybe you can get your switchblade back from me then,” the blonde grins, hooking a finger under his chin. “And maybe you can call me Jos. See you then, lovely.”

Joe blinks in shock up at the man, making the mistake of staring right into his eyes.

He chokes on his reply and then makes himself scarce.

-

No one knows what Joe does for a living. And to be honest, it’s probably significantly better that way. His usual answer is ‘an accountant’, and everyone nods extremely uninterestedly. If they did know, Joe’s sure he wouldn’t have any friends, nor would he be alive, and most people would be horrified.

He thinks of it a little differently, though. It’s not as though he’s met any of the people he’s sent to terminate. The boss calls him, gives him a brief description of his mark, tells him where the target lives and expects the job done. Joe gets paid, and all’s well that ends well. He doesn’t allow himself to be invested in his objective’s lives, because that would complicate things.

He doesn’t call them by their names – if he’s ever _told_ their names – because putting a name to them, makes them a _person,_ and it makes his job too hard. He just has to trust that the target has done something awful and that they deserve their means to an end.

_It’s nothing personal, they’ve obviously done something bad enough to be killed, so I’m just here to carry out the final moments._

When he gets home from his first unsuccessful mission, he doesn’t know how to handle the aftermath.

Normally, it’s clean the weapons, take a shower, go to bed. Don’t think about the mark, don’t think about the target, don’t think about the objective.

But today, all he can think about is the should-have-been-dead victim, and the job he hasn’t managed to… _execute._

He doesn’t know what _Jos_ has done, that is punishable by death, but the more he wills himself not to think about it, the more he wants to. Maybe he’s a homicidal maniac. Maybe he’s a petty criminal. Maybe he stole something of value. But what if he didn’t. What if Joe’s been taking lives and they’ve been innocent people.

Everything is catching up to him, and it’s messing with his head.

He doesn’t know what he’s going to tell his boss. Or how he’s going to get out of this. Because he hasn’t executed. And that’s what he was asked to do.

Only when he finally lets himself hit the bed, does he realise what he’s done.

He thought of him as _Jos._

Joe doesn’t call in for the next week.

-

Jos was expecting another visit from the blonde barbie assassin that broke into his house a few weeks ago. But he wasn’t expecting it to go quite like this. And he _definitely_ wasn’t expecting it to start with a knock at his front door.

“H-hi-” Joe shivers quietly. “I know I shouldn’t be here, but I didn’t know where else to go.”

Jos wipes away the streak of blood by the corner of Joe’s mouth, saying nothing as he examines the bruise on his throat. Joe’s got a hand covering the exterior of his arm, a hand that’s covered in crimson, and he smells like gunmetal and something saccharinely sweet. He’s shuddering, swaying imperceptibly, but Jos picks it up nonetheless.

“S-sorry” is the last thing he manages to gasp out before he collapses forward. Jos ducks under him, catching him with his chest, cradling a hand at the back of his head. He pulls him into the living room quickly, closing and bolting the doors, as well as pulling all the blinds shut.

He lays Joe down on the sofa, putting his legs on a stack of pillows to elevate them. “What the fuck did you do sweetheart,” Jos whispers to himself, as he pulls out his first aid kit, thankful that Joe’s unconscious for this.

All the protective gear he had on has been ripped to shreds, and the black coat he’d worn over everything isn’t too much of a hassle to get rid of. There’s a tight protective shirt underneath, and Jos cuts straight through the material to get to the injury.

He dips his tweezers into alcohol, hurriedly removing as much dirt and debris as he can, before cleaning around the wound with a sterile saline-soaked cloth, using a gentle and steady hand. He keeps placing a hand over Joe’s chest, to make sure there’s a steady heartbeat as he works on suturing the skin back together. It’s not pretty, but it’ll hold. Jos isn’t a professional.

He wraps a bandage tightly over the muscle, cringing every time Joe subconsciously winces in pain. “I’m sorry darling, I can’t help it,” he whispers softly, carding a hand back through Joe’s hair once he’s satisfied with his work. He does a quick once-over, making sure he hasn’t missed anything else, aside from the darkening black and blue bruises on the assassin’s abdomen and throat.

Content that Joe isn’t going to die, Jos sits on the floor by the sofa, resting the side of his head on his own arm as he watches over the blonde, continuously returning his hand to Joe’s thoracic cavity to check for his heartbeat. He refuses to think about the reason why he’s here, or why he’s had someone hold him at gunpoint.

Joe doesn’t look like an assassin. In all honesty, if someone asked Jos, he’d say Joe looks like an accountant. He could probably be a model if he wanted, Jos supposes, gazing over the flourish of his eyelashes, and the sharp cut of his jaw, protrusion of his collarbones, and tone of his torso.

He’s too busy _examining_ the injuries sustained that he doesn’t notice Joe’s eyes fluttering open. He is, however, alerted to the fact that the blonde is awake when he cops a shoulder to his face as Joe startles.

Jos has his hands on Joe’s forearms immediately, holding him down onto the sofa, so he doesn’t do any damage to his arm, and so that he doesn’t freak himself out. “Hey, relax, it’s me, you’re alright-”

“Jos?”

“Yeah, love, it’s me. Didn’t think I’d see you again, not like this.”

“Just- give me a moment," he breathes, feeling for the wound on his arm. "Did you- did you stitch me up?”

“Yeah, I did. You passed out, so I figured I’d save you the trouble. Did I hurt you?”

Joe shakes his head, and then groans at the throbbing pain in his frontal lobe. He sighs and lets his body slump back into the sofa. Jos can't help himself from rubbing his thumb gently over Joe's temple.

“You’d really think, that if they were sending me to kill someone, they’d tell me that my target was a trained killer,” he breathes. “And that they were really really gorgeous,” Joe coughs. Jos’ eyebrows crease and Joe wants to reach up to caress his jaw, but he can’t because moving his arm feels like he’s being stabbed, or shot, or both, all over again.

“Your mark did this to you!?”

Joe scoffs, “no chance. Most of my marks don’t even realise I’m in the room, let alone land a blow.”

“I’m willing to bet most of your marks aren’t _me,”_ Jos adds with an arrogant smile.

It looks good on him, so Joe doesn’t complain. “Also correct. My boss did this to me when he found out I didn’t kill my mark,” Joe smiles, letting his eyes slip shut again. “It was worth it though. He had the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.” 

After a brief pause, Joe’s heart skips a beat as Jos looks him in the eyes. Jos’ voice is quiet and tense, _“ex_ -trained killer,” he breathes out.

“Why d’they want you dead?”

“Cause I stopped killing.”

“Seems counterintuitive to me…” Joe squints before he scrunches his face in pain. _“Fuck-”_

“I’ll get you some Codeine, and then we can talk plans.”

“Plans?”

“Just cause I’m an ex-assassin doesn’t mean I don’t have a few tricks up my sleeve. That is, if you want out?”

“You’ll take me with you?”

Jos smiles, “told you, you’re too pretty to be wasted on such dirty work.”

Joe rolls his eyes despite the migraine. “I’ll show you dirty work.”

“Mmm. I bet you could,” Jos smirks. Joe looks at him, poker face only slightly broken by a tiny hint of desire. “Of course, I’ll take you with me. If you want that. How do you feel about Australia?”

“Sounds pretty.”

“Not as pretty as you.”

“You _really_ have to stop hitting on me. I tried to kill you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I’m dangerous.”

“Hmm. Sure. Didn't I have your neck in my hands while I was half asleep?”

Joe clears his throat and tries to diminish the flush on his cheeks. “You’ve got an answer for everything, haven’t you?”

“Absolutely. But I’d rather kiss you than play twenty questions.”

Joe grins, “there’s an idea I can get behind.”

Being extremely careful of Joe’s bicep, Jos hooks a thigh over his hips and leans down to gently press their mouths together, humming softly when Joe's tongue licks over his bottom lip. “So... Australia?”

“Yeah,” Joe says dreamily, smiling when Jos laughs against his lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> Joe's shot, so there's a bit of Jos cleaning and suturing up the wounds. It's fairly mild, but if you're squeamish it's just a teeny warning for you <3 <3


End file.
